A Letter to Three Wives

CinemaSerf 10/10/2026 2:13:04PM 8.4

"Rita" (Ann Sothern) has been with childhood sweetheart "George" (Kirk Douglas) for ever; "Deborah" (Jeanne Crain) muddles along well enough with "Brad" (Jeffrey Lynn) and then there's "Lora Mae" (Linda Darnell) who is married to the wealthy "Porter" (Paul Douglas) - or at least to his wallet. The three women are firm friends and share a mutual dislike/mistrust of the story's narrator "Addie" (Celeste Holm) and are about to embark on a boat trip with some local urchins when they receive a telegram from their nemesis. She declares to them that by the end of the day she will have left their small town - with one of their husbands!! Oddly enough, that doesn't convince the girls to abandon their trip and race home. Instead, they sail off and for the next ninety minutes or so we learn a little of just how they met their men and we try to guess which of those might be the one to succumb to the temptations of "Addie". Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz also had an hand in the screenplay that quite fulsomely lengthened this short story and he gives full rein to the three women to develop their individual characteristics with plenty of variety, a little humour and plenty of unpredictability. Though the men are important to the story, it's really only Paul Douglas (whom I thought throughout was actually Broderick Crawford) who actually has a role to sink his teeth into and as the latter stages of this tautly but lightly crafted drama emerge from the ashes more like a pigeon than a phoenix, we are poised for a sort of reverse whodunnit reveal with plenty of scope for three confident actresses who gel well together, to present us with something a little more sophisticated than we might have expected. It's bitchy - 1940s style, and I enjoyed it.